Basic Search Principles and Rules
Contents:
For simple searches, it is easiest to type a few words conforming to
the principles and rules listed below:
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Spaces (AND operator). When you separate
multiple words with spaces, the spaces are interpreted as an AND operator
as explained below. In other words, entering New York City has
the same effect as entering New AND York AND City.
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AND operator. When you enter words separated
by the word "AND," a document will only be found if all of the words
you specified are contained somewhere in its index entry. For example,
if you enter New AND York AND City as your search criteria, you
will find "New York City Subways," "City Subways of New York," and "City
of York's New Plaza." (For clarity, some people make a habit of enclosing
the AND operator with angle brackets like this: New <AND> York <AND>
City.)
-
Commas, (AND operator). When you enter words
separated by commas (or commas plus spaces),
a document will only be found if all of the words you specified
are contained somewhere in its index entry. (In technical terms,
commas are treated as Boolean AND operators.)
-
Search phrases (quotation marks). When
you enclose multiple words between quotation marks, you create a search
phrase. A document will only be found if all of those words
in that exact sequence are contained somewhere in its index entry.
For example, if you enter the phrase "New York City" as your search
criteria, you will find "New York City Subways," but not "City Subways
of New York."
-
Exact searches. Anything enclosed in double-quote
marks is searched for exactly as-is. For example, if you enter "Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fe" as your search criteria, only documents that
have that exact string of letters and punctuation somewhere in their index
entries will be listed. In other words, the commas and the word and
are treated as elements to search for rather than as operators.
-
Boolean operators. In technical terminology,
iPlanet Compass Server uses standard Boolean operators such as <and>,
<or>, <not>, and so forth.
-
Partial words. You can search for combinations
of letters, numbers, and common characters regardless of whether or not
they form a full, correctly spelled word.
-
Reserved words. When entered in the search
box, the words:
are treated as special reserved words that iPlanet Compass Server
interprets as operators that tell it how it should conduct the search rather
than words to be searched for. This is true no matter how they are capitalized,
not, Not, and NOT are all treated the same. If you
want to include one of these reserved words in your search you must enclose
the phrase in double-quote marks. For example, the criteria "truth
or consequences" treats the word or as part of the phrase you
are searching for rather than instructing the server to search for either
the word truth or the word consequences.
-
Reserved characters. When entered in the
search box, the characters:
are treated as special reserved characters that iPlanet Compass
Server interprets as instructions about how it should conduct the search
rather than words to be searched for. See Search Syntax
for information on how to use these reserved characters. If you want to
search for these characters, you must enclose them in double-quote marks
as part of a phrase.
-
Capitalization. Capitalization does not count
in a search unless you use mixed case. You can enter all Upper or lower case letters
in the search box and iPlanet Compass Server will find all documents matching
your criteria regardless of whether or not the letters in the document are
capitalized. If there is any mixed case,
the only matches returned will be those with the same case.
(If you want a case-sensitive search of all upper or lower case,
use the <case> operator as
explained in Search Syntax.
-
Dates. The following principles apply when
searching by date (before, after, etc.):
-
Full dates only. You must use full dates. Partial
dates like "6/97" are not allowed.
-
Days and years. You must use numbers for the day and year.
-
Months. You can use numbers or words for the
month. When using words for the month, you can use the common abreviations.
For example,
-
9
-
September
-
sept
-
sep
are all acceptable for September.
-
Separators. You can use standard numerical date
punctuation such as 1/15/97, 1-15-97, and 1.15.97.
-
Element order. Numerical dates must be entered
in month-day-year order. For example, 1-9-97 represents January
9th.
-
Day-month-year order. To use dates in day-month-year order,
you must spell out (or abreviate) the month. For example, 1 sep 97 for
September 1st.
For more complex searches, use:
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© 2001 Netscape Communications Corp. All rights reserved.